


The Cloth Menagerie

by RoseisaRoseisaRose



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Drabble, F/M, Fluff, Herman the Hedgehog (OC), I wrote it as Silver Snow but I guess it could be CF idc, Post Timeskip, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:06:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25212127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoseisaRoseisaRose/pseuds/RoseisaRoseisaRose
Summary: Bernadetta returns to Garreg Mach after 5 years to find her room exactly as she left it and her stuffed animals patiently waiting for her. This deeply concerns her.A Bernadetta/Yuri oneshot about resignation and hope.
Relationships: Yuris Leclair | Yuri Leclerc/Bernadetta von Varley
Comments: 14
Kudos: 95





	The Cloth Menagerie

The stuffed hedgehog was missing.

Bernadetta frowned at the carnival of animals perched along the headboard of her tiny dorm room bed – the wyvern, the elephant, the three bears, the spotted dog, the striped cat. All precious, all loved, all remarkably still here after five long years. She had fled the monastery too quickly to take them with her; she had spent five years grieving for so many and so much that she hadn’t had time to lament that they would surely be stolen, or torn apart, even if she someday returned.

And yet, here they all were, lined up as old friends, smiling at her as if to say they missed her. Except for the hedgehog. And Hermie the Hedgehog was her favorite. He’d always had a place of honor at the end of the line, the last one she bid goodnight to, the easiest to grab in a moment of panic.

The easiest to fall? It was worth a try.

Bernadetta lay flat on her stomach and swiped her arm in a wide arc under her bed. It was undignified, leaving her covered in dust, her hair dragging along the ground. But it was her room – it was her  _ space _ – and no one was around to tell her to stand up straight, or that noblewomen didn’t lay on the floor, or that it was stupid to cry over a missing hedgehog.

Her hands grasped around something soft and squishy and distinctly lacking in actual spines, and Bernadetta gave a wild laugh of victory as she pulled the stuffed hedgehog out from underneath her bed. Dust and lint caught between his fabric spines, giving him a distinct grey hue that he hadn’t had before. Bernadetta found herself giggling – “Grandpa Hermie,” she whispered to herself – as she pulled herself up to a sitting position, hugged her knees to her chest, and leaned against the bed to survey the room again.

“It’s you and me again, Hermie,” she muttered to the hedgehog. “And, well, our half-dozen closest friends,” she added quickly, not wanting to leave anyone else. She tilted her head back, and her menagerie stared down at her, upside down. “Did you guys keep this place safe for me?”

Bernadetta swept her eyes over the room, nervously, nostalgically, critically. Slow enough to realize something was off, but too quickly to pinpoint what it was. She looked again, and the answer was stark – nothing was off. Everything was almost exactly where she’d left it. And that was strange.

“You really did keep the place safe for me, Hermie,” she muttered to the hedgehog. Standing slowly, she wandered to the bookshelf. It was dusty, yes, horribly so – but the books were there. The bottom shelf had her stacks of craft supplies. Even a box of spare bow strings lay tucked away on the back shelf – certainly a thief would want those, if nothing else? Garreg Mach had been ransacked and ruined. Bernadetta had nearly cried when they met in the Great Hall, to see the overturned tables and cracked windows. Dorothea gently suggested she not visit the Cathedral just yet, but Bernadetta hadn’t needed motivation to make a beeline straight for her room.

The door lock had been busted; she had expected the worst. She had dived for her stuffed animals, which were still waiting on her bed, clutching them desperately and greedily. But they were all there. The books were all there. The room was untouched. Beyond the dust, it was as if she had never been gone. Even the vase on the desk still had a sprig of flowers in it.

Wait. That shouldn’t have been possible.

Bernadetta snapped her eyes back to the vase. The ceramic was old – faded, even. She was pretty sure she’d purchased it secondhand to begin with, and it seemed even more worn down than she remembered. But the flowers in it were  _ new _ . She stepped over to the desk, gingerly reaching out to touch the petals, alive and soft against her fingers. Violets. Cut less than three days ago, if she knew anything about botany. Violets were a sappy, spineless flower, compared to some she could name – they died quickly. They were beautiful. They shouldn’t have been here.

“I wondered how long until you made it here. Kind of thought you’d wait until after dinner.”

Bernadetta turned towards the voice at her doorway with a shriek. Having no arrows available, she threw her stuffed hedgehog with all her might. It bounced off Yuri Leclerc harmlessly, and he looked down at it, unsurprised and unconcerned, and then looked up at Bernadetta.

“Just me,” he said with a shrug and a smile.

Bernadetta screamed again, grabbed the violets, vase and all, and threw them with equal force. He gave a slight wince as it glanced off his shoulder, water spilling over onto his sleeve, but the true victim of Bernadetta’s decisions was the vase, which was no match for gravity as it hurtled towards the floor of her room, shattering into several pieces once it hit the ground.

Yuri swore and dropped to the ground, grabbing Hermie from amongst the violets and water and broken ceramics. He gave the hedgehog several wild shakes as he stood up, dust and water droplets flying with each flick of his wrist. It did little good, and he almost looked chagrined as he stepped over the broken vase and into Bernadetta’s room, holding the stuffed animal out as a peace offering.

“Haven’t seen this guy before,” he said. “I’m inclined to like him despite his initial attack.”

Bernadetta dropped one hand, which had been clutched tightly against her face, to take the hedgehog from Yuri. She set Hermie on the desk beside her where the vase had been and turned back to Yuri, her eyes wide.

“How’d you get in here? How’d you know I’d be here? How are you still alive? Are you mad at me?” she demanded in quick succession, not sure which question she actually wanted him to answer.

He settled on the first one, glancing over towards the ajar front door of her room. “Door was unlocked? Door was kind of open, actually,” he said. He gave a slight shrug. “Sorry, they’re all pretty broken. We’ll have to fix that for you; I know you like your privacy.”

“If you know that, I don’t know why you’re even here,” Bernadetta said frantically, feeling her heart beat faster at the realization that Yuri was standing in her  _ bedroom _ , of all places, acting as if this was normal, as if they were friends. “Everyone is back for the millennium festival; they’ll all be happy to see you, I’m sure. Unless – did you come in hopes that I’d be alone? Are you going to stab me in my sleep, Yuri? I knew it! You’ve been biding your time, haven’t you!”

A pained expression crossed Yuri’s face for such a brief moment that Bernadetta realized she must have imagined it – her paranoia making her see things, again. He was back to wry and confident in a heartbeat. “Wouldn’t it make more sense to wait until midnight if I wanted to kill you in your sleep, Bernadetta?” he asked, his voice soft and amused and just a little scary. “I could come back later, if you want, I guess.” He turned to leave, his cape swishing dramatically.

“Wait, no!” Bernadetta cried, grabbing his arm. His sleeve was soaked from the flower vase, and Bernadetta’s whole face flushed with embarrassment at the memory, but she held on. “Just – just tell me what you wanted to tell me,” she stumbled, staring at her fingers around his arm, not his face. “Then you don’t have to bother speaking to me again.”

“I just wanted to make sure your room was okay,” Yuri said, and Bernadetta didn’t take her eyes off her hands but she felt him shift until he was standing right in front of her. Slowly, she looked up to meet his gaze, and he seemed genuinely concerned, or at least, genuinely curious. “It’s been a long time,” he added quietly.

“It’s – it’s fine,” Bernadetta stumbled, trying to remember what had seemed off, when she’d scanned it minutes ago. It was fine. Everything was fine. That’s right – things shouldn’t have been fine. “That’s weird, right?” she asked him. “No one took anything. Everything is where it was. There were even –” she gestured towards the place where the vase was, but trailed off, suddenly lost in her own sentences. She looked back at Yuri. “Why would a thief leave flowers? Why didn’t they take my books? My things?”

Yuri tilted his head to the side, a bemused, curious gesture that shot nostalgia through her like one of her own arrows. “Maybe they decided taking a few old books and stuffed animals wasn’t worth it.”

Bernadetta frowned. “They took everything else,” she muttered. The library was evidently in shambles. The flowers in the greenhouse were trampled.

“Let me rephrase,” Yuri said, crossing his arms so that Bernadetta dropped her hand. Her fingers tingled, cold and damp from his sleeve and somehow feeling empty. Yuri leaned down conspiratorially. “As lovely as your hedgehog friend is, he’s not worth making an enemy of the most powerful thief in Abyss, when you hear he wants you to leave a place alone.”

Bernadetta paled. She knew Yuri was dangerous, everyone knew that, but to hear him  _ describe  _ himself as dangerous sent a shiver down her spine. But suddenly a lot of mysteries were getting solved, all at once.

“And why are d-d-dangerous thieves leaving flowers behind?” she asked, accusingly, even though she liked violets. “Aren’t they supposed to do the opposite?”

She saw the same flash of emotion across Yuri’s face, and tried to pinpoint it – pity, maybe? or regret? Whatever it was, it stayed through his sigh.

“In case you came back,” he said. “I know you like them.”

It was so nice. It was so scary. Yuri wasn’t supposed to  _ know _ things about her. And if he did know things about her, he wasn’t supposed to  _ care _ .

“How’d you know I’d be back today?” she asked, less accusing but no less curious. “Violets don’t last very long - you must have left them there this week.”

The head tilt again. And Bernadetta knew this expression – amusement. As if Yuri had won some game he’d challenged her to without fully telling her the rules.

“I didn’t know. I’ve just always left them,” he said, a small smile playing around his lips.

“Yuri,” Bernadetta said, dazed. “It’s been five years.”

Yuri shrugged. “Just in case.”

He was walking away before Bernadetta had a chance to grab him, before she knew what she even wanted to ask him – or  _ if _ she even wanted to ask him anything. He stopped in the doorway, turned and looked at her, his eyes as piercing as when he’d been inches away.

“Nice meeting Mr. Hedgehog,” he said casually. “See if you can get someone to fix that door for you before tonight. If not, I can drop by and keep watch – at midnight, did you say? That’s when the bedroom killers are out and about?”

“Don’t you  _ dare,”  _ Bernadetta practically shrieked, finding her voice and her courage now that he was far away again. “I’ll prop a chair against it.”

“Always resourceful,” Yuri said, and Bernadetta blushed at the praise, and then blushed at embarrassment that she blushed at the praise. “See you around,” he added before disappearing into the late afternoon sunlight.

Bernadetta collapsed in the chair by her desk. She would have to clean up that vase before she cut her foot on it, and it got infected, and she died, which would probably be her luck. She looked at Hermie, slightly damp, dust soaking into his quills, one button eye coming loose.

“What do you think about all this, Hermie?” she asked him, softly poking at his bad eye.

Hermie stared blankly ahead.

Bernadetta sighed. “As always,” she whispered, “You make a fine point.”

**Author's Note:**

> I like these two! I didn't think they'd do a good job incorporating DLC characters with the main lore of the story and then they really did do a good job of that? And Bernadetta and Yuri's backstory was one of those moments where I was like, oooh that's really cool.
> 
> I meant to write this as Silver Snow since that's the route I'm playing right now and I think it's a _fascinating_ route for characters studies of all of the Beagles. But reading over it I guess there's no reason this couldn't be Crimson Flower, if that's what you want, so, you know. Follow your heart.
> 
> [Twitter links here;](https://twitter.com/Rose3Writes) like share subscribe bell etc etc, I am very good at brand management.


End file.
